Aspirin? Ecstasy? Either one will get you suspended from some schools.

Mexican drug smugglers caused the latest fire in California. End the war on drugs and we’d have 87,000 acres of California forest back, amongst other things. What would you rather have? More forests or less marijuana? Apparently we have to pick.

It’s an oldie but a goodie.
Cocaine is now found on 90% of US bills. That it’s in our water supplies too should come to no surprise. Unfortunately, the drug gestapo will use these tidbits to rally their ranks. Wouldn’t it be better to consider this a white flag of sorts? How the hell do you wage a war on drugs when victory entails regularly burning most of your paper money supply?

The battle lines of the war on drugs reached professional sports some years ago. Big surprise. Offer somebody a few million to be really good at something. Create some drugs to help performance… and naturally people will use drugs. This whole drugs and sports thing is one of the most complicated aspects of a sensible drug policy. (Maybe more on that another time.) Homerun king
Hank Aaron wants MLB to release the list of roid-using ballers. He also wants Pete Rose to be reinstated. We’re okay with both sentiments. Is that weird?

And we’ll end on a bright note. Earlier this year Salon wrote about
Portugal’s success decriminalizing drugs. That it works is no surprise to people who’ve researched what happens anywhere drugs are legalized. Crime drops. Tax revenue increases. Health improves. Prison costs drop. Etc.

Educate your self about a sensible drug policy. Do what you can to help end the war on drugs.

A family of 4, including two young toddlers, are brutally murdered on a US highway because of
Mexican drug wars. A Mexican folk singer releases violent videos on the Internet, only to be murdered in cold blood during a concert a few months later, also because of
Mexican drug wars. Bodies of Mexican immigrants are found with their throats cut, bodies bearing signs of torture from electric shock.

The Mexican drug cartels’ bloody war has left a body count of more than 6,000 in its wake.

That’s more than either death toll in the Iraq or Afghanistan Wars.

The Drug War trudges on, leaving bodies in its path. It’s not a war for our children’s souls anymore; it’s a brutal and literal life and death struggle that is spilling over the Mexican border and into the suburbia of the United States.

It’s a bloody war fueled by the
demand for illegal drugs surging in the United States, according to Roderic Ai Camp, a Mexico expert at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif.

Such blood and violence recently prompted Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan to ask the United States to again consider the legalization of marijuana. He recently told CBS News, “Those that suggest that some of these measures need to be looked at understand the dynamics of the drug trade; you have to bring demand down and one way to do it is to move in that direction [towards legalization}…”

The violence has prompted the Obama Administration to look at tightening boarder security, including the underground weapons industry funneled into Mexico from the United States that continues to fuel the war.

Yet until we completely cut off the demand for illegal drugs, there will always be a market for these drug war lords to wage their bloody business. Guns may be the instruments, but it’s the drugs that fuel violence through their worth on the black market. Put non-dangerous drugs like marijuana on the pharmaceutical counter, and you’ll be taking a big bite of the drug cartels’ market for drugs and violence.

When will we treat drug violence by cutting off the demand? Our war on drugs is misguided at best. When we wise up and make drugs a legal, government taxed industry, we take away the market for the very black market that is killing our children and others unfortunate enough to be in the path of the drug war. No more collateral damage. Talk to your representatives today. Tell them you want a MUCH more sensible drug policy in the US.

Just ignore this image. It has nothing to do with sensible drug policy!

Welcome to a new site dedicated to reforming United States drug laws and otherwise educating about alternatives to the multi-billion dollar war on drugs. I don’t remember where I read it, but the best little vignette I’ve discovered yet goes something like this. Prohibition never works. Think about the first prohibition. No, not the eighteenth amendment, go back further. Much further. Citizens in the fabled garden of Eden were prohibited from ingesting the fruit of a single tree. There were only two of them and one big, bad, omnipotent cop. How’d that work out?